Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during the preceding calendar year. As the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, it was one of the original Pulitzers; the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year.
Finalists have been announced since 1980, ordinarily a total of three.
Winners
In 31 years under the "Novel" name, the prize was awarded 27 times; in its first 69 years to 2016 under the "Fiction" name, 62 times. There have been 11 years during which no title received the award. It has never been shared by two authors. Four writers have won two prizes each in the Fiction category: Booth Tarkington, William Faulkner, John Updike, and Colson Whitehead.1910s
- 1918: His Family by Ernest Poole
- 1919: The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
1920s
- 1920: No award given
- 1921: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
- 1922: Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington
- 1923: One of Ours by Willa Cather
- 1924: The Able McLaughlins by Margaret Wilson
- 1925: So Big by Edna Ferber
- 1926: Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis
- 1927: Early Autumn by Louis Bromfield
- 1928: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder
- 1929: Scarlet Sister Mary by Julia Peterkin
1930s
- 1930: Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge
- 1931: Years of Grace by Margaret Ayer Barnes
- 1932: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
- 1933: The Store by Thomas Sigismund Stribling
- 1934: Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller
- 1935: Now in November by Josephine Winslow Johnson
- 1936: Honey in the Horn by Harold L. Davis
- 1937: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- 1938: The Late George Apley by John Phillips Marquand
- 1939: The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
1940s
- 1940: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
- 1941: No award given
- 1942: In This Our Life by Ellen Glasgow
- 1943: Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair
- 1944: Journey in the Dark by Martin Flavin
- 1945: A Bell for Adano by John Hersey
- 1946: No award given
- 1947: All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
- 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
- 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
1950s
- 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
- 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
- 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
- 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- 1954: No award given
- 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
- 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
- 1957: No award given
- * The Voice At The Back Door by Elizabeth Spencer
- 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee
- 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
1960s
- 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
- 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
- 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
- 1964: No award given
- * Coat Upon a Stick by Norman Fruchter
- * Joanna and Ulysses by May Sarton
- * Careful, He Might Hear You by Sumner Locke Elliott
- * And Then We Heard the Thunder by John Killens
- 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
- 1966: The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter by Katherine Anne Porter
- 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
- 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
- 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
1970s
- 1970: The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford by Jean Stafford
- 1971: No award given
- * Losing Battles by Eudora Welty
- * Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
- * The Wheel of Love by Joyce Carol Oates
- 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
- 1974: No award given
- * Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
- 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
- 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
- 1977: No award given
- * A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean
- * ' by Alex Haley
- 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
- 1979:' The Stories of John Cheever'' by John Cheever
1980s
- 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
- * Birdy by William Wharton
- * The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth
- 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- * Godric by Frederick Buechner
- * So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell
- 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
- * A Flag for Sunrise by Robert Stone
- * Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
- 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- * Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler
- * Rabbis and Wives by Chaim Grade
- 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
- * Cathedral by Raymond Carver
- * The Feud by Thomas Berger
- 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
- * I Wish This War Were Over by Diana O'Hehir
- * Leaving the Land by Douglas Unger
- 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- * The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
- * Continental Drift by Russell Banks
- 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
- * Paradise by Donald Barthelme
- * Whites by Norman Rush
- 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison
- * Persian Nights by Diane Johnson
- * That Night by Alice McDermott
- 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
- * Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver
1990s
- 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
- * Billy Bathgate by E. L. Doctorow
- 1991: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
- * Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan
- * The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
- 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
- * Jernigan by David Gates
- * ' by Robert M. Pirsig
- * Mao II by Don DeLillo
- 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
- * At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott
- * Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates
- 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
- * The Collected Stories of Reynolds Price by Reynolds Price
- * Operation Shylock: A Confession by Philip Roth
- 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
- * The Collected Stories of Grace Paley by Grace Paley
- * What I Lived For by Joyce Carol Oates
- 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford
- * Mr. Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos
- * Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth
- 1997: ' by Steven Millhauser
- * The Manikin by Joanna Scott
- * Unlocking the Air and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin
- 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- * Bear and His Daughter: Stories by Robert Stone
- * Underworld by Don DeLillo
- 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham
- * Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks
- * The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
2000s
- 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- * ' by Annie Proulx
- * Waiting by Ha Jin
- 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
- * Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates
- * The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams
- 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo
- * The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
- * John Henry Days by Colson Whitehead
- 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- * Servants of the Map: Stories by Andrea Barrett
- * You Are Not a Stranger Here by Adam Haslett
- 2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
- * American Woman by Susan Choi
- * Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins
- 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
- * An Unfinished Season by Ward Just
- * War Trash by Ha Jin
- 2006: March by Geraldine Brooks
- * The Bright Forever by Lee Martin
- * The March by E. L. Doctorow
- 2007: The Road by Cormac McCarthy
- * After This by Alice McDermott
- * The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
- 2008: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
- * Shakespeare's Kitchen by Lore Segal
- * Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson
- 2009:' Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
- * All Souls by Christine Schutt
- * The Plague of Doves'' by Louise Erdrich
2010s
- 2010: Tinkers by Paul Harding
- * In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin
- * Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet
- 2011: A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
- * The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
- * The Surrendered by Chang-Rae Lee
- 2012: No award given.
- * Train Dreams by Denis Johnson
- * Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
- * The Pale King by David Foster Wallace
- 2013: The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
- * What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank by Nathan Englander
- * The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey
- 2014: The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
- * The Son by Philipp Meyer
- * The Woman Who Lost Her Soul by Bob Shacochis
- 2015: All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
- * Let Me Be Frank with You by Richard Ford
- * The Moor's Account by Laila Lalami
- * Lovely, Dark, Deep by Joyce Carol Oates
- 2016: The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
- * Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link
- * Maud's Line by Margaret Verble
- 2017: The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
- * Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett
- * The Sport of Kings by C. E. Morgan
- 2018: Less by Andrew Sean Greer
- * In the Distance by Hernan Diaz
- * The Idiot by Elif Batuman
- 2019: The Overstory by Richard Powers
- * The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai
- * There There by Tommy Orange
2020s
- 2020: The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
- * The Topeka School by Ben Lerner
- * The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Repeat winners